


pruit igoe and prophecies

by orphan_account



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Slow Burn, a kind of AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9348383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "His face is a map in which she loses herself."Orson Krennic and Jyn Erso throughout the years.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ennaih (aquandrian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/gifts).



> i listened to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0RKpmjjpLQ quite a lot while writing it. 
> 
> the theme of this fic is really how similarity these two characters are in terms of fervor and tenacity. ben mendelsohn's mercury face and felicity jones' stubborn face also inspired this, as well as the beautiful, perfect, thoughtful and poetic writing of ennaih, the main author of this pairing. Bless You!! 
> 
> Hope You will enjoy

i.

  
The child bears an uncanny resembles to Lyra, for she has an inherent warmth about her, a certain softness of deep colors that Galen oh so very loves in his wife. Her eyes are sharp, a sign, a mark from both of the parents. With this intelligence nested in her eyes, the Erso's hope she will one day become a scientist, like them.

  
But Krennic sees that this girl is a wildthing- from the way she dissects her food to the many wrinkles on her clothes - and is too much alive to be a theorician.

  
"She is rash," he comments to Galen, when Lyra goes to put her to bed. His voice echoes and flies in the cavernal space of the Coruscant chambers. Feeling restless and unsatisfied, Krennic drums his fingers against the dinner table; he has been trying to convince Lyra for the past months to go to Alpinn where she can dig whatever she finds in the mud and earth, and leave Galen alone.

  
But Lyra is not so easily fooled, not so easily wavered. Unlike Galen, she is not blinded by his uniform and rank. There is no shared past to mist her eyes.

  
"She is wild" he repeats. Galen chuckles and refills their glass.

  
"Reminds me of you" before Krennic can blink, his friend adds. "No patience. Wants to get the business done as soon as."

  
He smiles at that a bit, a rarity.

  
"She is way too savage."

  
Galen laughs now, an honesty.

  
"That is exactly what I am saying."

 

 

  
ii.

  
He knows it will scar, the shot. The adrenaline is wearing off, and here it comes, the sharp pain to visit, blinding. As he sits down in the deep end of the shuttle, he glances at Galen, sitting in the other corner of the ship, absentminded and empty. There was no need to handcuff him, and he still seems to be compliant enough. In a fit of tenderness, Krennic has agreed to carry Lyra's body home, where her husband can grant her a fitting farewell.

  
But the child is still missing.

  
"I could have convinced her" says Galen suddenly, in a low voice, perhaps to no one, but himself.

  
Krennic tries not to scoff and fails. There is a feral kind of fury building _upupup_ in his head and heart and he is trying to swallow it away.

  
"We both know that's a lie" his voice is sharper than intended. A symptom of the ache inside. " You were too quick to say she is dead."

  
( _A self-fulfilling prophecy_ )

  
This works well enough and Galen falls silent.

  
Krennic knows him well enough to never ask whether his child has died or not.

  
A symptom of the ache inside.

 

 

  
iii.

  
While most of the sensations come through, Jyn feels nothing. She has the physicality, the sense of the town around her - two old ladies chattering, a Gran is trying to sell necklaces made from dull-colored, tiny rocks and there is a burnt, a deadsand smell mixed with that of rotting - but it is as if all of these things would come through hundreds of filters, as if she would or could not be a part of it.

  
She just walked twenty miles, barefoot, from the dumpster desert fields of Filve into one of its minor village, Dafula. Her lungs are heavy with dust and her knees and the sole of her feet battered with blisters. It is supposed to be peaceful now, what remained from this damned day. Jyn wonders where she could snitch some ammunition for her blaster.

Whether she can find anything in this dusthole, apart from water and synthfood.

  
Then she hears it.

  
The voice of troopers, sounds and silence dubbed and dumbed by the helmet; the clump of them standing at a corner and setting up something. They are nothing but a white entity standing there, a great mass of a body.

  
Jyn falters for the first time in that day. She crossed a desert for this.

  
Then realizes, slowly and surely, that there is nothing spectacular or special about her.

  
No one could or does know that she has been part of Saw Gerrera's Partisan army for years. An almost child, who has already killed one of the Imperials with her bare hands three or four years ago. Set fire to Imperial camps in the wild or used her small and lithe body to hide explosives in the water pipe of dozens of military bases. No one knows. _No one_. What she has done or not done. Who she is. She is just a scrawny, alldirt girl for them.

  
Then amidst the hushed, mechanic, metal communication, she sees what she has only heard in her nightmares. The true terror strikes.

  
_Him._

  
Not in reality, no, of course - it is a mere hologram; projected onto the main square, but it is imposing and disturbing nevertheless. Jyn dares not to move. The old ladies stop talking, the Togruta next to her freezes as well.

  
It is a recruitment propaganda.

  
" - your name, your talent and your mind. It is now more urgent, than ever, to look into the hungry eyes of the questions. Am I and are You ready to change the world around us? The Team of Imperial Intelligence is asking this and - "

  
He has a strange lilt to his voice, a sort of speech impediment audible to the ears around but his enunciation is so careful and adamant that it is but a background bite. Jyn has an image of him in his mind - of this Krennic, this dweller of dark place in her heart - and it helps for the hologram fogs his face. Only the strangeness, the charm of cunningness of his eyes remain. He is a man made up from careful sketches, but his character is a sketch nevertheless, all charcoal draped in milk. Milk gone mad. A facade of a human.

  
She might be sick, she realizes, and finally moves, albeit it is though her legs are made up of quicksand.

  
"Sorry" she says to no one particular, but the Togruta girl, a young woman, looks up and points at their right, a dusty place. In she rushes.

 

 

 

iv.

  
It is a bar.

  
Thus the first time Jyn drinks real alcohol, she is sixteen and a half. Rex used to give her a sip from the stolen, and very cheap kind of Corellian brandy he preferred, but she thinks that does not really count. Then Rex was killed - a laser straight to the neck) and Jyn refused to do anything with any kind of brandy or liquor.

  
After managing to vomit the entire, almost nonexistent content of her stomach as an afterthought of Orson Krennic's speech, Jyn counts her credits on the hardcold toiletseat. The result is troubling. All she really has is her blaster (which she would never ever give up; Saw taught her that much), her comm, her Krayt leather belt, her clothes and some water.

  
She decides the belt's gotta go in exchange for some food and bed.

  
"What do you have?" she asks at the counter, looking at the menu, scribbled in a clumsy Cogennan handwriting.

  
"Well" answers the bartender, eyeing her up and down with distrust. "The real question is what do you have?"

  
She explains. Shows her belt. The bartender laughs really, really loudly.

  
"It's on me" a voice says, soft. It is the Togruta girl from the street, smiling, at one of the tables behind her. "What do you want? Choose it, then sit down."

  
Jyn has to be careful. Saw said that merchants who are confident about making a good deal always order Merenzane Gold, but it is supposed to be quite expensive. It would be a joke to ask for it, having no money whatsoever.

  
Something simple and adventurous then. Daring.

  
"Vosh, please" Jyn holds her breath. "And uh, a yeast soup."

  
The bartender grunts and she takes it as a yes.

  
Jyn sits down, careful and guarded, facing the Togruta girl who is chewing on something sweet-looking.

"Desert radish" she comments, smiles. Her teeth are pearlwhite. "I'm Ashla."

  
A pause. Jyn knows an alias when she hears one.

  
"Liana Hallik"

  
Ashla gives her a small, tight smile. Jyn touches her blaster under the table.

  
There is a comfortable pause as the older girl finishes her meal.

  
"You know him?" she gestures towards the door. Lays back, contented and full. "The holoman?"

  
Now that is a trap. Jyn shrugs her shoulders.

  
"The Commander is pretty well-known in this system."

  
Ashla's eyes are shrewd, seeing through.

  
"A good kind of well-known or the bad kind?"

  
A pause. There is a shift in her voice, and there is a vibration in the air, foreign but not exactly unkind. Jyn feels drawn towards this Togruta female, a strange kind of affection.

  
_No reason to trust, no reason to tell_ ; says a voice, much like Saw's. She feels something prickling her eyes and she is so so so very tired.

  
"Does it matter? I am hungry and tired and fucking sick of Imperials."

  
Ashla frowns. The drink arrives, swirling white and Jyn downs it immediately, letting it kick.

  
"You are not the only one."

  
Jyn stares. Feels like the liquor is lighting a fire in her throat.

  
"You are not the only one to be sick" repeats Ashla. "I'm telling you this, because I have to leave Filve today and have a place near the outskirts. Not to fancy, not to big; but I want it to be in good hands."

  
"Is this a joke?"

  
The mysterious woman looks straight into her eyes and in there, her eyes, there is the same bitterness that Jyn has carried for eight years.

  
"Would you rather get drafted, Liana Hallik?"

  
She grins, all teeth and spirit.

 

 

 

v.

  
In the dreams, Jyn's father has blood on his hands.

  
"Stardust" he mouthes. "I only wanted to protect you."

  
_But,_  she asks, _how can you shield me if you are so far?_

  
The blood feels warm as he touches her face. He says nothing. His eyes are very sad.

  
_I have those eyes_ , she thinks.

  
In a blink, she is in a very small place, suffocating. Saw Gerrera's ageworn, wiseweapon face emerges from the dark and he says;

  
"Five minutes. Just five minutes, Jyn."

  
_I should not have been born_ , she thinks. _I am more of a burden than a girl._

  
Saw is turning away, regal and rusteaten.

  
"Wait," she says, but her mouth is mute. Someone is standing behind him, a man in white, an irony of a saint.

  
Jyn turns and Orson Krennic's smile is not as cold as she has ever imagined. His face is a map.

  
"Some things are not to be outrunned."

  
When she wakes, she can finally weep.


	2. Chapter 2

vi.

  
The other officers giggle and mock him behind his back. Although talented and aspirant, Krennic is a _no one_. No. Not true. Even worse than that. 

Orson Callan is an outsider. 

Nothing, but a sinewy young architect from Lexrul, all hunger and rage; ready to fight, never believing in luck. His lisp worsens when they ( _the higher ups, the other students at the academy_ ) doubt him and they continue to snicker and point. 

Orson does not care. He has heard these background noises all his life. From his father and his siblings and the others in his town. But in the end, it was not them who escaped the burning landscape and that wretched hut. Escaped that cheap, that mudscented averageness awaiting. He remained and flourished, despite all. He has learned and waited and won.

There is an insolent streak in everyone’s stare at the Future Programs’ meeting when he makes an announcement. Tarkin’s mouth curls in distaste as he opens his mouth.

“I have an idea.” His mind is a clockwork, his eyes only see potential. Krennic knows when to hide and back down and this is not the time. His voice wavers a bit. “A weapon.”

Everyone in this committee has the upper ground. Krennic’s name rings the same as theirs, yet these names carry weight. An importance.

Something he has not.

Everyone is laughing without sound. 

Sees it.

Hears it.  

Lives it. 

It is with the same hunger and rage sitting on his face, with which he stands above the ashes of the rebels on Lokori years later. Galen Erso stands by his right side. He is forty-five years old and the building of the celestial terror is halfway done. 

They aren’t laughing then.

 

 

vii.

  
At the other side of the galaxy, Jyn Erso - twenty years old and very much in need of money and patience - is being dragged to the gallows on Corulag. She has been caught to steal from D'laisha, the self-declared dictator of the city. Jyn always knows who to lay dry.

Except, she is awaited. 

Except, she is caught. For good.

This is, at least, what they tell her while they hold her up by her hair.

“Mors certa” they whisper. 

( _Death is certain_ )

The guards try to take her necklace and she bits their fingers away, feral. They knock her out with such force she gobs a tooth out the next day.

Her mouth is full of blood but she smiles.

Jyn knows the locals would never kill her, not while the storm troopers own and siege the city. She is workforce for the Empire and thus to be used for better purposes. There is no use for the dead. 

( _This is why there is no use weeping for them_.) 

“Hora incerta” Jyn whispers back. 

( _The hour is not_ )

They ship her to Wobani in the morning.

 

 

viii.

  
“Sir” says Lieutenant Emed Mengor. He is out of breath and he smells strangely, like he bathed in a full tank of engine oil. “Our Wobani contacts have sent us the data file for the Daden case.”

Krennic looks up from his breakfast, surprised.

“So soon? I’m flattered." 

Wobani administration has been a divine punishment recently; not only to the prisoners completing their actual punishments there, but to anyone trying to take information in or out of the Labour Planet. 

"Um” Mengor gulpes. “There is a problem, sir. We have another bug in the communication system and” seeing his Commander’s paling face, Mengor starts to sputter. “ And they had to send us the whole of the D-labelled file instead of finding .”

His brows furrow, the lines on his face, etching shadows onto it. 

“How many names?”

“Fifteen hundred.”

“Alphabetized?”

“Yes, sir.”

There is a beat of silence, and in this silence, Mengor watches his superior think. Even while eating, he looks inhumane, like a sort of statue.

When he speaks again, Krennic has light and relief in his eyes.

“Do you have the entries here, Lieutenant?”

“Of course” Mengor takes out the pocket projector and places it onto the dining table. “May I?”

Krennic nods and resumes eating. It’s a simple meal, Raballa with honey and a lot of water. Mengor touches the datapad and readies himself to calculate and note. They might stay here all morning. The two of them are alone in the personal quarter of the Director’s barrack.

“Narrow the keywords to names only beginning with the syllable Da and De, respectively. Another proviso, also: the name should contain the consonant n. Understood?”

Half a year ago, someone has begun to take out high-ranking officers of the Empire, one by one. Then right after the third victim (namely the Director Delian Mors who was burnt alive in his quarters) Orson Krennic has inherited his rank and, as a form of baptism, he has been appointed to investigate the murders. A task no one asked for or agreed with particularly well. Including and especially the freshly promoted. 

There is a purity in the silence that grows between the space and time of Mengor typing. 

“And if it is not our man?”

Krennic looks up, curious. The Lieutenant blushes.

“I mean… the intel built its info from.. scraps of biased opinions. How do we know for sure?”

Krennic is a contradiction of tenacity and temperament, a thing of wonder among his subordinates. His smile, like his moods, is fleeting. 

“We do not.” He is playing with the fingers of his gloves now, the pair not yet on his hands. “My personal guess is that our man is an infamous smuggler, Dengar. Based on our intel from Kintan, he was seen at the site at the time of the murder, confirmed by several locals. The killings stopped around three months ago. We know Dengar not only had contacts with several Separatist groups, but he was a talented shot. All these lead to the conclusion that he is the one behind the killings. If he is on Wobani and he is on Wobani since three or four months, then his culpability will be certainty enough for the Imper-”

A beep cuts through his speech. 

“Sir” Mengor’s voice is thick with excitement. “Only ten people left.”

“Project them.”

The first two is nothing particular:

Dainna, Sheto -  a petty Cuvacian slaver from Tatooine, dark and big and without teeth.

Then Dalina, Karis - a sullustan prostitute who collected their clients’ tongue and kept them hanged from the ceiling in a rusty Coruscant studio apartment, all androgynous and smugsmiled.

And thenthen, a humanoid girl called Kestrel Dawn. A thief and forger. Assault, shipjacking, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct. A _chaoslightning_ girl, soso young. A bit over twenty.

“ _Stop_ ” The Lieutenant turns to look at the Director. Krennic’s face is marble and his lips have gone white. “What’s her name again?”

His lisps is stronger than it has ever been. As if someone put a razor in his mouth.

“Kestrel Dawn” repeats Mengor, careful. “Half of her records are written in Mid Rim dialect, so it is a bit difficult to -”

Krennic holds his right hand out. His movement are way too disciplined.  
“I will manage the files from now on.” A pause. “Next time, call an actual engineer for this kind of work and try not to fall into the very depth of dirt.”

“Sir. Should I-”

Krennic’s voice is very low.

“I said I can finish it.”

An ultimatum.

 

 

ix.

  
It happens on a Zhellday, near the Feast of Enlightened. The air of Wobani in this season is smoke and cinder and steel. 

Their lungs are done for.

“A great man is coming” says Lyla-07 in the morning. Jyn’s roomate is a cyborg. She strangled her foster father, a Captain serving in the Rebellion, at the age of fourteen. Her mother went to the Courthouse the next day, told all about it. Both of them got arrested for complicity and treason. “They say he is one of the highest of higher ups.”

It is still dark outside as they dress up in their light grey gears to move Permex from the mines to the furnace at the station at the end of the mineral minefields.  
“He is not that great if they sent him here” Jyn shots back, voice sewed with fatigue. “Unless he wants to give us a raise, we’re not gonna see him.”

“Paka told me he is looking for a murderer.”

They lock eyes. Jyn is the first to break into laughter, a glorious sound in the gory morning.

“Yeah well” Lyla cannot stop snorting, a half-wheezing, half-iron sound. “Good luck with that, right?”

 

 

x.

  
They march as one great mass of dark dirt. Nearing the reprovision break, they line them up near the entrance of the common aula where they usually dine.  
“Alphabetized lines” says a trooper. “Close the gaps”

It is a dance they know all too well. 

Jyn is trying to turn her head all around, searching for familiarity, but only sees Paka Cit, on her left. Lyla-07 must be way behind them all. 

“I hope they don’t expect us to give a fucking show” says Karis Dalinna next to her, loud and brash. One of the troopers raises his blaster, as a warning sign. Jyn bites her mouth to keep herself from laughing. 

The door of the aula slides open and Jyn Erso’s heart stops beating for a second.

Because just ten meters away from her, stands the Director Orson Krennic, clad in all white and vanity. He is surrounded by black soldiers and it makes him looks taller and colder than it should. There is a visible shiver shattering them all, their entity of sinners. 

The moment he appears, Jyn _knows_. Knows _he_ knows she is here. Knows he has come for her. 

Think, she shakes and shouts herself mentally. Thinks; _I cannot die here._

 _Yes_ , Jyn has survived worse than that and thrived, nevermind the circumstances. Most of her blood and sanity has been spilled for her freedom. This is no end. This is only a wall still. A high wall, indeed, a higher-up wall. 

But one that needs and thus can be be jumped or be destroyed. It is but a barrier. No dead end. No dead, _death, nononononon_ -

She looks around again. Krennic must have a ship. But the exact location is unknown. It can be miles away. An astral storm is coming too, so it would not be wise to fly. It is too risky of a plan.

There is also a storage room, full of armor and weapon and knife just behind the dining aula. She just needs to reach that narrow corridor and at the end of the corridor the swift elevator. _Yes,_ Jyn thinks. _Yes. I am alive and shall be._

Pi'lah Pratt, the absolute asshole who runs the Wobani camp, finally finishes sweet talking the Director and steps forward. He is a huge wolfish creature, a Zygerrian beast. 

“Dengar, where are you, you slimeball?”

 _A wonder,_ Jyn thinks. It feels like fainting and falling, this relief. She needs all her determination not to reach for and grasp her necklace. 

There is a general and obvious resistance from Dengar, a not-so-simple smuggler who must have done some pretty wild shit to hurt the Empire. Paka Cit catches her eyes, mouthes: _Are you okay_? 

Jyn sees that Krennic is looking directly at their direction, unmoved, unchanged. So she dares not to give her a thumb up. She dares not shout, _I am alive!_

Dengar gives a monologue fake enough to sound utterly believable. He is very loud. Sounds crazy. Maybe is crazy. It would not be new. 

The Director seems unimpressed, but they do not shoot him on site. Instead, two of the black troopers guide him away. Pratt is smiling, prances around the Imperial bosses like a girl on her first ball. Krennic says something again, but she cannot read his face or mouth for he has turned to face Pi'lah and only his cape and back is seen.

 _Come on_ , thinks Jyn, heart beating wildly again. _Get the fuck away from here. Do not look closely._

Pi'lah Pratt nods.

“Dawn!” he roars. “Kestrel Dawn, come here.”

They all freeze. Paka’s eyes are wide as the moon but he says nothing and Jyn wants to kiss him for that. She feels the tenseness of her brain go into her limbs. 

“Kestrel Dawn” repeats the Zygerrian once again. Sheto is fidgeting, Karis’s elbow stab her ribs. 

Krennic turns around and says, relatively simply,

“Jyn Erso.”

She goes off, as an explosion, hopes to be lightning and a wisp of a target. She turns right around, avoiding the guards and running straight into the crowd, and they open up for her, creating a shield. She is sprinting to make a circle. With any luck, she can by-pass the canteen and arrive at the pantry of weapons right away. 

But something is very wrong.

Several things happen at once. A scream from her right ( _Lyla_ ) and a shout ( _Krennic_ ) and the sound of a bullet ( _the troopers_ ). And next to the stinking smell of slime and smoke and grease and grit, blood appears and blooms under her. It makes her sway and down she goes, landing right to her chest, paralyzed. 

Her left knee is on fire. 

“FUCK” she roars, an animal caged. “GET OFF.”

One of the black soldiers is above her and Jyn decides to kick her right in the loins with her right leg. It is a sort of success, she hits the hips and the trooper groans. She does not even have the time to scramble when she feels lifted off, by her neck. 

“Stop” the voice is almost gentle, a kind that wears politeness as an accessory.  
The troopers are still clinging on her, and she is still being half-dragged when lifted to face him. 

Orson Krennic has aged a lot since she caught sight of him all those years ago.

Jyn actually gloats upon the sight of his face, so far from perfect. He is a freckled man, a man whose face opens and promotes his hardships throughout life: a vision of telltale scars and strange lines. A deep contraction at the corner of his eyes and mouth, a strict fold near his clean-shaven chin. He is much closer to the grave, in a sense.

Yet the most human aspect of him must be that silvermouth; a wide line showing crooked teeth and a fault. Jyn knows how that quick mind with that clever mouth has done damage. How it can change, like mercury. How it can melt any will. 

His face is a mirror and map. A map in which she loses herself.

She is over twenty, and for a _terrible, horrible, flashing_ moment she thinks; _he is handsome_. The thought is dark and deep and disturbing. She feels like spitting on herself.

He opens that mouth and shatters the moment;

“Didn’t Saw Gerrera teach you to listen to your name?”

Jyn really spits then. Her saliva, a mixture of blood and mud, lands right onto the collar of his starch white uniform and his mercuryface. His eyes widen.  
The guard on the right shakes her and before the slap comes, Krennic holds up his hand again.

“It is not necessary” The calm in his voice is forced, because a color has crept across his nose and temples. “Escort her to my quarters while I speak to the smuggler.”

He does not spare another glance, just turns around. 

She shivers as they cuff her. Food would be nice.

 _What do I need_ , Jyn reminds herself, as a mantra:

A weapon,

food,

clothes,

money,

and a transport.

What _he_ needs is unknown. What he needs is probably ugly and vile.

They need to make a deal. Her heart sinks. She needs to bend for this man.

 _Now,_ thinks Jyn as they approach the only military barrack at this forceforsaken planet, _how do I deal with a person who has everything?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I acknowledge that I could not finish this story in two chapters.... because... I got carried away. Hope You still like it. Feel free to give feedbacks and reviews and overall criticism. Just hit me w it.


End file.
